Sunday, October 15, 2017

Question : If the soul is separate from the body why does it say in the Bible that it can eat or fast (Lev. 7:20; 23:27 ; Ps. 35:13); it can weep and faint (Jer. 13:17; Jonah 2:7); can crave and give way to fear (Deut. 24:7; Acts 2:43); a person might kidnap a soul (Deut. 24:7), etc.? Aren't these attributes of the body?

Answer : Greetings to you in Jesus wonderful name! God has created man as a triune being. That means, consisting of three in one. Paul the apostle gave a benediction to the Church that says, "23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it." (1 Thess 5:23). In other words, Paul did not just bless the believers body, but also the soul and the spirit, which means that they are three different unique entities but with interdependent existence. Hu(dust)+man(being) is a being which God made out of out of dust and breathed the spirit and soul existence in to it (Gen 2:7). So each of us are a spirit-man with a eternal soul that is covered with a dust body. So the body gives us world-consciousness, the soul gives us self-consciousness, and the spirit within us in the innermost being which gives us God-consciousness.

Because all these three are interconnected and interdependent, if one suffers all the other three interdependent entities also suffer along with it (Prov 18:14). When God commanded the people of Israel saying, "and ye shall afflict your souls," on the day of Atonement, it does mean 'afflict your body through fasting' (Lev 16:29-31). In other words, our soul and body are so interconnected and interdependent that if we do not take care of the body well with the right food and nutrition, the soul starts to cry for it by releasing emotions that brings dissatisfaction. WhenGod provides, He provides for both body and soul through his guidance (Psa 107:9). God wants us to approach Him with all the dissatisfaction in living a selfish life of sin, so that He could free us from its bondage and fill us with His love for Him and others around us.

So any fasting we do should be done with with this right attitude of acknowledging our sins towards God, and should expect God to provide His supernatural atonement for it so that by faith we could live blessed on earth. But when people fast without any sign of repentance for their sins of breaking His commandments and looking forward to change one's behavior by the help of the Lord's mercies and grace, then God does not get pleased with such fasting's that afflict the soul and makes people think that God is indebted to them because of their so called sacrifice of skipping of food for a day or a time (Isa 58:3). Self-righteousness is a religious subtle pride that blinds a person to make them think wrongly, that God is their debtor, when in reality God is no debtor to any human being but they are actually a debtor to Him as a Sovereign Creator and Sustainer over them (Job 35:6-8; Heb 6:10; Rom 11:35; Matt 20:15).

The soul and the spirit both has three components to its make, they are the mind that thinks, the emotion that feels, and a will that decides (Matt 26:37; Luke 22:43-44, 41, 42). I believe that just as the soul has the above three components, the spirit also have the same three component within it which we call it conscience collectively (Acts 24:16; 1 Peter 3:16). The mind of the spirit which is the conscience thinks, speaks and witnesses in the Holy Spirit (Rom 9:1), the spirit also has a will that takes decision to judge right from wrong (1 Cor 5:3) and the spirit also has emotions that it can express within us outside of our natural emotion of our soul (John 11:33; Luke 1:47; Php 4:7; 1 Peter 1:8). All the 3 components of the spirit can only be empowered by the Spirit and we can choose to operate in it through surrendering our soul-will to God, we can only know that our spirit desires always the holy things of God and godliness, which in reality we can attain only when we let God empower us so that we can be able to operate from our spirit within (Prov 20:27; 21:1; 2 Kings 3:15; 1 Sam 16:23; Luke 4:18). Thus our whole life can be influenced by our soul-will to rule all other components of the spirit and soul by choosing to abide by the Word of God and surrender to the higher will of God which is only able to help us differentiate between our soul and spirit (Heb 4:12).

God's will is that we should surrender our body as a living sacrifice to Him and let the Spirit control our spirit by our willingness (Rom 12:1-2; 13:14; Eph 4:22-24), which in turn has the ability to control our soul and bring it in to subjection to the will of God (Gal 5:25, 16). Once the soul is perfectly guided by God and is under the control of His Spirit, then our body automatically lines up to do the will of God in our day to day lives (Matt 4:1-2). That is why when we are spiritually weak, we should fast to afflict the soul and bring it in to subjection to the spirit within (Matt 26:39, 41; 6:16-18). When the soul which acts as the bridge between our spirit and body acts independently, then God's work get quieted. But when the soul quietens itself and allows the spirit to rule it, God's glorious work and His will gets fulfilled in our lives through our physical body. Our look and our thoughts and our walk and our talk and our actions will directly glorify God when we are under the control of the Spirit of God who usually prays through us the will of God to keep us intact in the will of God (1 Cor 6:20; Rom 8:26).

Thus I conclude that soul is a spiritual entity that works along with the body in tandem, when we die and leave the body to be in heaven with God until we get resurrected with our new body (2 Cor 5:8; 1 Thess 4:16-17), then our emotion, mind and will can be felt by our-self and can be expressed to God (Rev 6:9, 10, 11), but it cannot be expressed to the material world as before until we get resurrected in our new glorious celestial body (1 John 3:2; Luke 24:41-43; 1 Cor 15:40). As for the unbelievers, being in hades.gr/sheol.heb after their death [(i.e.) sheol/hades is a temporary place where souls are kept as they await the final resurrection], they will be too self-conscious and that their spirit without the goodness of God being felt in that place of hades, they will go through a precursor of hellish torment to suffer until the day they will rise up in the resurrection of the wicked dead to be judged, and will again be thrown with their eternal body in to everlasting fire (Luke 16:24, 25; Rev 20:11-15; Dan 12:2; John 5:28, 29).

All the attributes of the soul are talked to the body and vice-versa happens because of the close connection we have seen between the soul and the body. That doesn't mean that we should consider them the same as we know that the body is something material and physical that we can see, and the soul is immaterial and soulish that we cannot see. In our modern language, I can compare body and soul to a hardware and software. Both together are called as computer, but hardware is something physical which we can see and is material, the software that runs within is immaterial that we cannot see with our eyes, yet makes the computer work. Our soul that makes our body work is the software of the body, this soul within us makes the hardware which is thebody to helps us continue to have life on earth. Once God takes away the spirit, the soul leaves the body immediately and the physical bodybecomes dead body (Luke 12:20; Eccl 12:7; Job 34:14, 15). Only a person who knows nothing about the triuneness of man will call both the soul and body as either just a body or a single entity or the same. Once the soul leaves the body, we can only see a dead body and not the person who used to be within it, that in itself proves that the person within the body has left the body during his death to leave the shell or just the dust covering of his body which is made from the earth in the beginning to be left behind in the earth (Gen 35:18). The body without the spirit is dead, the spirit within a human which the soul accompanies always, and is also interconnected in such a way that it cannot be taken apart except by the Word of God (Jam 2:26; Heb 4:12), when one dies either it leaves to heaven or hades according to ones belief and salvation experience. The soul of David was so disciplined by him that he actually commands it to bless the Lord and forget not all His benefits (Psa 103:2). David did not command his body, because he knew that the body can only do what the soul says to it. Train your mind and soul, and your body will follow it faithfully.

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